For Better or Worse Another Summer Slips and Slides Away
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Photo by Brandon Hoogenboom on Unsplash
If you’re a parent who spends a lot of time online, it’s hard to escape the meme about making the most of the 18 summers you have with your children before they leave home. It crops up every year when the weather turns unbearably hot and school winds down. Like most parenting memes that encourage parents to cherish the moment, I find this one to be annoying at best and downright harmful at worst.
The grind of parenting is hard enough, particularly when the kids are home even more, without the added pressure of trying to discover some sort of magic elixir that will freeze time, or parent so perfectly that some imaginary version of your future self will look back contentedly and say, “yes, we really nailed that — could not have been better!”
The truth I’ve discovered in almost eleven years of parenting is that I’m not going to remember what we did day-to-day next year, let alone twenty years from now. So, to the best of my ability, I try to let go of any illusion that I might be able to create the perfect summer experience if I just try hard enough.
We live in a time when much of the world seems to be fraying in front of our eyes. Disease, war, climate change, gun violence, the erosion of the socio-political system. All of it is converging to make living extremely weird for lack of a better term.
My kids aren’t quite old enough to grasp most of it yet, and I find myself frustrated by that in some ways. I recently slipped up and made some quip to my ten-year-old about how he will probably have to be a climate change migrant when he grows up and he got upset. I quickly walked it back by saying, “Hey, maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe all the scientists in the world are wrong.”
I didn’t say that last part. I make plenty of parenting mistakes, but I typically try not to compound them.
With all the outside noise swirling around and encroaching on my mental well-being, I’ve tried to take it easy on myself this summer. I accepted that the house was going to be a mess. I committed to keeping up with the essentials like laundry, dishes, and surface-level cleaning when time allowed while letting the rest go. I don’t worry about the clutter or the grimy corners of every room or the tiny doll shoes that are scattered all over the floor like dandelion seeds tossed around by the breeze. I cut back on scheduling formal activities like camps because they are often more trouble than they are worth, and I accepted that the kids were going to use their tablets and devices A LOT. We live in a relentlessly capitalistic society; work comes first. It is what it is. I can’t single-handedly change it. My wife works long hours at a hospital. I don’t do anything as important or stressful as that, but I do have to work from home writing hundreds or thousands of radio ads. Not so we can get ahead, really, but so we can maintain the status quo. This is what people do now. Because of my type of work, the kids can be here with me, but I can’t play with them and provide them with enriching experiences all the time. Not that they would even want me to. They’re not three years old anymore.
I won’t remember most of what we did this summer ten years from now and neither will they.
Perhaps we’ll remember our one little vacation to North Carolina. We had lots of fun visiting family, going swimming, going canoeing, jumping around at the trampoline park, and visiting the amusement park called Carowinds.
I will certainly remember fighting for my life on a water slide.
It was a hot, sticky day at Carowinds when we visited. The kids were insistent that we visit a water park on vacation, so of course, we did. In the middle of the day, our youngest agreed to try the water slide that involved a large circular tube the whole family could ride in. However, as we joined the line for the ride, we noticed a sign saying that only four people could ride in each tube. I was the odd person out in our family of five, so instead of sticking around to ride alone or with another family like a weirdo, I decided to brave the rather intimidating-looking body slide nearby.
Well, I was going to try it, but as I approached the entrance to the line, a diminutive teenage girl with a large floppy hat and a smear of white sunscreen on her nose stopped me and said I needed to remove my shirt. I was taken aback. I don’t remove my shirt in public. That is my general rule. To be clear, I was wearing a swim shirt. It was a bit baggy, but still an official swim shirt as determined by Amazon dot com. I hesitated, then scurried away.
I circled around the block a few more times, but since my family wasn’t making much progress in their line and the lazy river was closed because there was a dead squirrel in it, I swooped in for another go at this ride I had decided I should try for some unknown reason. The girl was still there, so I reluctantly stripped off my shirt, draped it over the fence, and passed by her. She gave me an encouraging thumbs up. I gave her an awkward nod as if to say, “hope you’re happy now.”
When I reached my place in line, I immediately spotted about 17 people in swim shirts. Remember what I said about our society fraying right under our noses?
I waited my turn, arms crossed over my chest to deter prying eyes. I could only assume that all the shirted people in line were eying me suspiciously thinking, “what does this guy think he’s showing off…yikes.” I eventually reached the top of the slide and received sliding instructions from another teenager. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to ask about her stance on swim shirts.
When the green light flashed, I scooched into the drop and began a twenty second or so struggle for survival. I closed my eyes as water splashed up into my face and nose. It was dark anyway and I had no desire to see where I was going or look at my bare chest. I fought to keep my ankles crossed (as instructed) as the leg on the bottom banged repeatedly against the hard plastic. I had brief visions of headlines reading “Florida man somehow drowns in medium-sized waterslide in North Carolina,” before splashing into the pool and getting a refreshing gulp of warm, heavily chlorinated water in my mouth.
It remains unclear to me how anyone can consider the water slide experience to be fun. However, I am willing to acknowledge that it is the perfect summer activity in this moment. Summer at the end of the world is all about forcing yourself to do things that are supposed to be fun so you can convince yourself you’re living. So you can pretend things are normal.
I did avoid making embarrassing headlines, at least by not drowning. It’s likely a major publication wrote about me embarrassing myself by walking around shirtless. I wouldn’t blame them. Most importantly, the kids had a great time. Even our youngest who absolutely HATED the family tube water slide, by the way (smart girl). The vacation was a highlight of a rather mundane summer. But I think mundane is okay. Our kids love playing video games, watching YouTube, and talking and interacting with each other while they do those things. When they’re not at each other’s throats, they have a great time even when it seems like they’re not doing anything.
Meanwhile, we keep our heads above water. We fight for our lives as we slip and slide through this weird time and place. We wait for school to start back so we can navigate an even more convoluted schedule with heaping sides of minutiae, tedium, and anxiety.
Only 18 summers? Who cares? Getting through one has to be good enough.